Mediterranean series part 3: the focus

Now, there are two very typical foods that come to mind when I think of Mediterranean food. Besides tabouli. I mean, yeah tabouli, but that's like having a garden on your plate. I mean substantial food. Stuff that will fill your stomac- what, tabouli still? Shut up. I mean gyros and falafel.

Gyro (pronounced YI-roh, Southern speak be damned. Not JAI-roh or HE-roh) is that delicious little pita stuffed with lamb and beef that will destroy your cholesterol rating for 2 straight weeks. Falafel is it's vegetarian cousin, which, unsurprisingly for something from the Middle East, doesn't mean more healthy, because it's delicious and fried and therefore delicious. Pre-cholecystectomy. Gyros we'll corrupt at a later date, because there's a tragic lack of falafel and a fortuitous accumulation of garbanzo beans in my pantry right now, and also I'll do what I want to, thank you.


If you don't know what falafel is, you can inquire of Wikipedia, which will inform you that it is, in fact, a "deep fried (oof) ball or patty made from ground chickpeas and/or fava beans." (Cited as of July 21 2011 at 11:14 am CST, since it could change in the next 15 minutes. Goddamn Wikipedia). We here at Cooking With Bile like the sounds of that except for the deep fried part, since deep frying imparts a delightful portion of pure artery-clogging, liver-seizuring goodness to anything. So let's corrupt this and make it as healthy as possible, shall we?

Baked Falafel with Tsatsiki

An important consideration to any Mediterranean dish is the inclusion of the tsatsiki sauce, which is stupid delicious and I don't care what you say otherwise. It necessitates being made correctly to fully compliment the dish, but the bright side is it's difficult to not make correctly.

For yon delicious tsatsiki, we suggest the following approach:

1 pint fat free Greek yogurt (we like Fage, but let's be serious, you can use sour cream here too)
1/2 medium cucumber
2 tablespoons basalmic vinegar
1 tablespoon garlic salt

The key to tsatsiki sauce is bringing out the taste of cucumber, so you first take your handy dandy grater and grate the everliving hell out of that medium cucumber. Shred it finely and discard all the juice you have. Or drink it. (I didn't know you could even have cucumber juice.) Then you, um, basically throw everything into the yogurt (cucumber shreds, vinegar, salt) and mix it up. Put it in the refrigerator overnight. This is important, because the yogurt magically absorbs the cucumber taste or something. You'll have a lot of tsatsiki, but that's okay because it tastes damn delicious on everything.

On to the main event: falafel!

Ingredients:

(We're reducing this recipe a good deal from how we found it)

1 can chickpeas, drained
1/4 cup onion, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tablespoon all purpose flour
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon baking powder

pita pockets, or whole pitas (as low fat as possible)(pretty easy)
lettuce
tomato
yon tsatsiki sauce

So to make these delicious creatures, you preheat the oven to 400 degrees. And then you do some other stuff.

Throw the entire first list up there (chickpeas to baking powder) into your food processor (which you surely have) and blend it on the Chop setting. You want your stuff to be chunky, with bits of chickpeas and such still in there. Then shape the glutinous mixture into small patties (say, around 2 inches in diameter) and throw those into a hot skillet lined with that delicious Olive Oil PAM you have from before. They'll need around 2-5 minutes to brown on each side. You can throw them in the oven for around 10 minutes when you finish browning them.

Fish the falafel out of the oven, shove in a pita with lettuce, tomato, and tsatsiki, and you're practically Middle Eastern!



Overreaching redneck stereotypes about Middle Easterners notwithstanding.



Look at my lovely assistant about to enjoy a delicious and relatively nutritious meal!

Next on the list of corruptions:
Lasagna
Black Bean Burgers
Tiramisu
Pizza
Noodle Kugel

Tastes like rice... (Mediterranean series part 2)

For those of you who aren't familiar with Whole Foods, they stock this particularly delicious form of starch called Cilantro Lime Quinoa. It is delicious. Oddly enough, we could never find a recipe online for it, though Whole Foods is usually pretty persistent about lending out their delicious, delicious recipes.

So we made our own. Damnit.

It actually turned out really well, for not knowing what the hell we were doing.

Cilantro Lime Quinoa

This makes use of the principle of TAKE A STARCH and THROW THINGS IN IT. So relatively basic, and very nom.

Ingredients:

1 cup uncooked quinoa
1 bell pepper, chopped (not green)(gross)
4 green onions, chopped
1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
2 Tbsp sliced almonds (optional)
4 Tbsp lime juice

By the way, if you need this to be even lower in fat content, which you don't, because this is pretty awesome already, and whatever, you can use cous cous. Cous cous has 0 grams of fat and blah blah.

Cook the quinoa according to the package; it should give you about 3 cups of cooked delicious starchiness. You need to a) rinse it before using it, and b) add about 2 tablespoons of your lime juice to the cooking quinoa suspension. Gives it kick.

Once it comes out, shove it in the refrigerator for a little while to cool down. Once chilled somewhat (30 minutes is not bad at all), remove and throw everything else in there, mixing thoroughly. And then eat it. Straight up delicious.



We suspect it'll be even better after a day sitting in the refrigerator, when the almonds have softened and the lime is more pervasive. Though it's not bad soon off the stove. And low in fat!

Lovely for your figure.

Next on the list of corruptions:
Falafel
Lasagna
Black Bean Burgers
Tiramisu
Pizza

Sweet return to the Mediterranean

Hummus is delicious. Who doesn't like hummus? We all love hummus. Hummus is the quintessential hippie food, all organic and put on toast and shit.

Unfortunately, hummus is chock full of fat, probably because most hummus recipes utilize tahini and olive oil. Tahini, for the non-inducted, is sesame seed paste, aka fat in a creamy form. So we introduce for your viewing pleasure a delicious amalgamation of chickpeas and other ingredients that won't make you want to die if your bile salts are on overload.

Roasted Red Pepper Hummus

The principle behind this recipe is the core principle behind any hummus: drill together garbanzo beans and whatever other ingredients seem delicious at the time. Essential for this production of savory pleasure is a food processor, which is an investment you can make and never regret. Seriously. They can run pretty steep sometimes, but the return on it is stupid ridiculous. You'll never stop using it.

Ingredients:
1 15 oz can chickpeas (note that some brands of chickpeas have more fat than others. Yes, I know it's a damn bean. I don't make these rules)
1/2 cup roasted red peppers (you can get them prepackaged in water. Make a point of it)
1/2 cup white onion
1/4 cup cilantro (fresh!) (if you can)
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp garlic salt
1 Tbsp lime juice

Hummus is pretty easy to make. Drain the chickpeas of their juice (retaining the juice). Throw everything (except the juice) in the food processor and jam the lid on. And then start it. I shouldn't have to hold your hand for this. Leave it to run until nice and creamy, and use the chickpea juice to get it to your desired consistency.

And then eat it. Pretzels are low in fat, and also cucumber slices are nature's chip! Delicious and green and stuff!



Yeah, we put it in a plastic container. We're students and poor as hell. What of it?

Next on the list of corruptions:
Falafel
Lasagna
Black Bean Burgers
Tiramisu
Pizza

Beef is pretty damn fatty

French fries aren't very low in fat. Who knew?

A good burger with french fries had not been had since February, and we decided that we were going to remedy this situation. The easiest way to remedy such a predicament is to eat a good burger with french fries, but we here like to avoid masochistic eating.

Beef tends to be very high in fat content, so an actual burger is out of the question. Turkey, it turns out, can be much lighter on the stomach, since it is possible to obtain 99% fat free ground turkey. And french fries can essentially be approximated in a way that doesn't completely massacre the scale.

Turkey Burger

99% fat free ground turkey
Healthy Life 98% fat free wheat sandwich buns (no need to skimp on the nutrients here)
Lettuce
Tomato
Shiitake mushrooms
Soy sauce/sweet soy sauce
PAM Olive Oil cooking spray
Spices

The glorious thing about this burger is you make it like a typical burger. Fill the meat with any combination of spices you prefer (we used Chipotle Chili pepper and garlic salt) and shape it as you would a standard patty of ground meat (not a bad idea to aim for a quarter pound, but, hey, low fat). You can either grill these creatures or throw them on one o' those Lean Mean whatevers like we did, with a healthy spray of the PAM. Cook for maybe 6 to 8 minutes.

We are fans of flavor, so we also sauteed the shiitake mushrooms (cut into ribbons) in the soy sauces. Eat that burger with any combination of lettuce, tomato, mushrooms, and the various condiments, but avoid mayonnaise. Mayo is basically lard and you know it.

Fries

Potato (and plenty of salt)
Sweet potato (and plenty of sugar and cinnamon)

Fries are pretty basic when fried, and are even more basic when not. Slice these things at your desired estimate and distribute on a cooking pan coated with the PAM mentioned above. And spray with PAM again. PAM is glorious. Cook at 450 degrees until crunchy. Or you may prefer soft and floppy. Really, either way works.

Remove, and cover the potato wedges with the salt and the sweet potato with the sugar and cinnamon. They can be enjoyed with any combination of ketchup, mustard, or honey mustard.


And that's basically the premise. Very basic, but a low fat alternative to a usually higher fat meal. Modify by adding onions or other vegetables and such.



We're sure you'll enjoy it.

Next on the list of corruptions:
Falafel
Lasagna
Black Bean Burgers
Tiramisu

Our beginnings and mission of foodliness

So it turns out your body really likes having a gallbladder.

We discovered that being in the small percent of the population with side effects from a cholecystectomy kind of sucks. What is downplayed is that some livers don't really get over being left alone, and certain steps have to be taken to compensate for the liver freaking out.

We found that fat of any variety tends to cause problems what with cholecystokinin and bile secretion and blah blah gastroenterology, which basically implies we are on a mission to create food that has little to no fat in it, and for it not to taste like cardboard. Turns out to be a little hard, but with the combined power of art and medicine, we've had some success so far.

I know that one of the hardest parts about cooking is finding something you actually want to create, so I'm hoping this little project will be a sort of lead-in for people looking to eat lower in fat than they currently are, if only for kicks or maybe for more sinister reasons. Because we all know low fat eating is a gateway to supervillainy. It's just a compilation of ideas and shortcuts that we want to offer up for public use.

Let's see what we can do with this.